Bulletin Issues

Bulletin, August/September 2014

Inside ASIS&T

Summer Balloting Completed for Election of New Board Members

As this issue of the Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and
Technology, was being completed and prepared for uploading to its publishing platform, the polls were closing on the Summer 2014 election of officers and directors of the association.

While the outcome of the election will be noted on the ASIS&T website and will be reported in full in the next issue of the
Bulletin, hereís a report on the candidates who agreed to serve if elected to maintain the international excellence and presence of your organization.

President-Elect
Two candidates running for president-elect in 2015 and succeeding to the presidency in 2016 are Nadia Caidi and Jens-Erik Mai.

Nadia Caidi is associate professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Trained in linguistics and communication in France, she then obtained an MLIS and Ph.D. from UCLA. Nadiaís research interests focus on information policy and community informatics. Her studies of information post 9/11 and on diasporic communities have been funded by several grants from SSHRC (Canada). A longstanding and active member of ASIS&T, Nadia served as chair of SIG/III, co-chair of SIG/IFP and co-organizer (with Michel Menou) of the Global Information Village Plaza (2001-04). She received the James M. Cretsos Leadership Award in 2006. Nadia was the president of the Canadian Association for Information Science in 2010-11.

Jens-Erik Mai is professor at the University of Copenhagen, Royal School of Library and Information Science in Denmark. He was previously associate professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, where he also served as vice dean and acting dean. Prior to that he was assistant professor at the Information School of the University of Washington where he co-directed the Center for Human-Information Interaction. He earned his Ph.D. in library and information science from the University of Texas at Austin as a Fulbright Scholar and master and bachelor degrees from the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark. Jens-Erik is currently an ASIS&T director-at-large; he has been chair of SIG/CR and a member of the SIG Cabinet Steering Committee.

Directors-at-Large
The top two vote-getters among the following four candidates will serve three-year terms as directors-at-large on the ASIS&T Board of Directors: Chirag Shah, Jamshid Beheshti, Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan and Boryung Ju.

Chirag
Shah, assistant professor of information science and an affiliate member of computer science at Rutgers University, studies interactive information retrieval/seeking, especially in the context of online social networks and collaborations, contextual information mining and applications of social media services for exploring critical socio-political issues. He is also interested in theoretical and practical aspects of information as a dynamic construct and online information propagation. Shah holds degrees from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; IIT Madras, India; and University of Massachusetts, Amherst. An active ASIS&T member since his student years, he has held leadership roles in both student and geographic chapters; chaired Annual Meeting tracks and sessions; served as reviewer for ASIS&T publications; and attended every Annual Meeting since he joined the organization. In recognition of his early active participation, he was awarded the 2013 ASIS&T James M. Cretsos Leadership Award.

Jamshid Beheshti holds degrees in mining technology, history and library and information science from various Canadian institutions. He has taught at the School of Information Studies at McGill University for more than 25
years and is currently the Associate Dean in the Faculty of Education at McGill University. Jamshid has been the principal investigator and co-investigator on more than a dozen Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grants, and in collaboration with colleagues has obtained several million dollars in research funds over the past decades. He is widely published in leading journals of information science and technology. His expertise in designing information systems for children and young adults has been the topic of his contributions in his recently co-edited books,
The Information Behavior of a New Generation: Children and Teens in the 21st Century (with Andrew Large, 2013) and
New Directions in Childrenís and Adolescentsí Information Behavior Research (with Dania Bilal, in press).

Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan is professor of information and communication sciences at Jean Moulin University (JMU) in Lyon, France. Before joining JMU, she was associate professor at the University of Nancy, France. She earned degrees in French literature from University of Port-Harcourt, Nigeria, and Stendhal University, Grenoble, France, before embarking on a new career in information studies. She obtained a Ph.D. in information and communication studies from Stendhal University. Her research interests include using methods from computational linguistics, text analytics, information visualization and information retrieval to address information processing problems; the history and foundations of information and communication sciences; epistemology and the history of sciences. She has also been studying the impact of recent technological advances (open data, big data and web 2.0) on science and on the society. Since joining ASIS&T in 2009, Fidelia has served the association in many capacities, actively participating in SIGs and chapters, among other activities. She obtained the New Leader Award for 2012-2013.

Boryung Ju is an associate professor at the School of Library & Information Science, Louisiana State University. She received her Ph.D. in 2002 from Florida State University and a masterís degree from Indiana University. Her research areas include human-computer interaction and knowledge management. Some of her current research projects are on the impacts of collaboration technologies on knowledge sharing and interaction design for video digital retrieval systems. She co-chaired the 76th ASIS&T Annual Meeting and has actively participated in numerous scholarly and professional organizations. She currently is the managing editor of the
Journal of Information and Knowledge Management and an editorial board member for the
International Journal of Information Science Theory & Practice and the
Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science.

77th ASIS&T Annual Meeting
Two Keynote Speakers Help Shape Program for Upcoming Event
The 77th ASIS&T Annual
Meeting, October 31-November 5, in Seattle, Washington, will be informed by the insightful presentations of two stellar speakers:
Alessandro Acquisti, Carnegie Mellon University, and Kris Kutchera, Alaska Air Group. Operating under the general theme of
Connecting Collections, Cultures and Communities, the conference committee, under the leadership
Jens-Erik Mai, selected the plenary speakers for their breadth of experiences in creating and managing connections between and among corporate units, academic specialties, customers and consumers.

Kris
Kutchera, who will deliver the opening keynote address on Sunday, November 2, is vice president, information technology and strategy management for Alaska Air Group. She is responsible for managing and developing computer systems, information systems and voice and data communication for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air. Alaska Airlines is the latest step in Krisí career, following stints that began at Boeing Computer Services and Capgemini America and moved through leadership positions at Washington National Gas, Fluke Corporation and F5 Networks. Kris holds a bachelor of science degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from University of Washington, where she also serves on the Founding Board of the
iSchool.

On Monday morning, November 3,
Alessandro Acquisti, associate professor, information technology and public policy, Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University, will address a plenary crowd. Alessandro is also co-director of the CMU Center for Behavioral Decision Research. His primary research interests are economics and behavioral economics of privacy and privacy in online social networks. His findings have been featured in numerous leading journals, edited books and conference proceedings, as well as in popular and business-related media outlets such as the
Economist, NPR, CNN, New York Times and the Wall Street
Journal. Alessandro holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, and masterís degrees from Berkeley, London School of Economics and Trinity College Dublin. In a previous life, Alessandro was a classical music producer and label manager, freelance arranger, lyrics writer and soundtrack composer for theater, television and independent cinema productions.

Pre- and Post-Conference Workshops and Seminars
Information professionals once again have the opportunity to brush up on subjects that are changing at rapid paces or to learn something entirely new with an array of pre- and post-conference offerings at the Annual Meeting in Seattle. All workshops require separate registration and payment of fees; workshop attendees need not attend the Annual Meeting. See sidebar for the days, times and brief descriptions of courses that will be available this year. See the
ASIS&T website for more details or look for the printed version of the preliminary program to arrive at your home or office in September.

And for Students Only
For the fifth year running, all students attending the ASIS&T Annual Meeting have an opportunity to participate in the student design competition in which groups of interested students are formed and given a design challenge to complete in less than 48 hours. Though the competition is intense and rapid, the reward is worthwhile: Each member of the winning design team receives free registration for the next ASIS&T Annual Meeting. For a report on last yearís exciting competition, see the article by
Candy Schwartz and Rhiannon Gainor
in this issue of Inside ASIS&T.

Conference Venue
All formal conference sessions and events will be held at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel in Seattle, Washington. Special discount rates are available until October 9 or until the block is sold out, whichever comes first. Contact the hotel directly (206-621-9000) for more details or to book your room.

News About ASIS&T Members Pnina Fichman, previously director of the MLS program and co-director of the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics at Indiana University (IU), is the new chair of the Department of Information and Library Science at IU. She takes over from
Debra Shaw, who retired at the end of May.

Eileen Abels, dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College;
Linda Smith, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and
Lynne C. Howarth, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, have received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for
Educate to Innovate: Re-visioning Library and Information Science Education. The project will focus on the importance of leadership and cutting-edge skills in LIS education.

Ali Shiri, formerly assistant professor, has been promoted to the rank of professor at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta. The promotion recognized his research, service and teaching contributions to the school, its students and the library and information field at-large.

The Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science adds two new assistant professors to the faculty for this fall.
Chaoqun Ni, whose research interests sit at the intersection of science policy, science and technology studies and scholarly communication in the context of data-intensive science, is completing her doctorate at Indiana University.
Amber Stubbs, with a Ph.D. in computer science from Brandeis University, teaches courses in data structures and algorithms, programming and theory of programming languages and information retrieval.

News from ASIS&T SIGs Special Interest Group/Social Informatics (SIG/SI) seeks nominations for two best paper awards to be given this fall. The Best Student Paper Award honors the best paper written by a doctoral student on a topic informed by social informatics. Nominations may include a published paper in a peer-reviewed journal during 2013 or a conference paper presented in 2013. The Social Informatics Best Paper Award honors the best paper published in a peer-reviewed journal on a topic informed by social informatics during the 2013 calendar year. The winning authors will be invited to present their papers at the 10th Annual SIG/SI Symposium at this yearís Annual Meeting in Seattle. The deadline for nominations for both awards is August 15, 2014. For more information and full submission rules and guidelines, please visit the SIG/SI website at
http://asistsigsi.wordpress.com